Schumer Floor Remarks on the False Choice between Judge Gorsuch or a Nuclear Option and the Administration Undermining our Nation’s Healthcare System

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor urging Republicans to drop the dangerous game of exercising the nuclear option. Senator Schumer also called for the Trump administration to immediately cease any effort to undermine the nation’s healthcare system. Below are his remarks:

Mr. President, as we prepare to consider the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, I’d like to take a moment this morning to discuss the false choice Republicans are presenting about his confirmation.

The Republican Majority wants everyone to believe that, by the end of next week, one of two things must happen: either Judge Gorsuch will pass with 60 votes, or they must exercise the nuclear option and change the rules of the Senate to pass him on a simple majority vote. As the Republicans tell it, one inexorably follows from the other. They are talking about next week as if they have no choice but to go nuclear if Judge Gorsuch doesn’t earn 60 votes.

It’s absolutely false. It’s complete hokum. This is not some inevitable showdown. The Republicans control this body. They can choose to go nuclear or not. The ball is entirely in their court.

In the past, when a president’s nominee didn’t get enough support for confirmation for whatever reason, the president just picked another nominee. If it comes to that -- that’s what this president should do.

If Judge Gorsuch fails to garner 60 votes, the answer isn’t to irrevocably change the rules of the Senate; the answer is to change the nominee.

It is NOT Gorsuch or bust. The Republicans are playing a game of unnecessary and dangerous brinksmanship. If it comes to a rules change, and I sincerely hope that it does not – for the sake of the grand traditions in this body, for the sake of the “advice and consent” clause of the Constitution – but if it does, it will be squarely on the shoulders of the Republican Party.

A Republican Party who broke 230 years of precedent when it refused to even consider President Obama’s nominee, Chief Justice Merrick Garland, with almost a year left in Obama’s presidency. No vote. Not even a hearing. And Republicans accuse Democrats of the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee? What Republicans did to Merrick Garland was worse than a filibuster. They didn’t even grant him the basic courtesy of a filibuster. And Merrick Garland actually was a consensus, nominee with Republican buy-in for the Supreme Court.

And then, President Trump totally dispatched with the notion of “advice and consent” by pledging, before he was even elected, to nominate a Supreme Court Justice off of a pre-approved list of hard-right, conservative Judges put together by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Contrast that with Bill Clinton, who sought and took the advice of Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch in nominating Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. He did not pick his first choice, Bruce Babbitt, because Orrin Hatch said that would be a bad idea and would not bring the kind of unity we needed. Or how about Democratic President Obama who took again the advice of Orrin Hatch again when he picked Merrick Garland? There was bipartisan consultation. That’s why the process worked. There was none now, and the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, not simply mainstream organizations but as every Republican knows, organizations on the hard right of the Republican side who often threaten Republicans if they don’t vote the right way, the far right way. So we’re not talking about advice and consent. We’re talking about something that was done without any consultation, and a political move by a president to shore up his base with the hard right wing.

What President Trump did was worse than simply ignoring Article II of the Constitution. President Trump actively sought the advice and consent of right wing special interest groups instead of the United States Senate. That’s another Supreme Court-related precedent that the Republicans discarded. And because President Trump made that choice, now Republicans say they have no choice but to change the rules? It’s illogical and self-serving.

And for all the hand-wringing by my friends on the other side of the aisle that they cannot imagine Democrats voting against Judge Gorsuch; I would like to remind them that only three — three — of the current senators on the Republican side voted for either of President Obama's confirmed nominees.

Let me repeat that: only three of the current senators on the Republican side voted for either one of President Obama's confirmed nominees. Most voted for neither.

And every single one of them lined up to conduct an “audacious” partisan blockade of Merrick Garland.

Mr. President, it is true that norms and precedents and traditions have been eroded by both sides. We changed the rules for lower court nominees in 2013 after years of unprecedented obstruction by Republicans on Circuit and District Court judges. Still, I’m on the record as regretting that decision.

But this is an order of magnitude much greater than that. This is the Supreme Court. This is the court that is the final arbiter of US law and the Constitution.

We Democrats have serious, principled concerns about Judge Gorsuch: his record, his long history of ties to ultra-conservative interests, his almost instinctive tendency to side with powerful special interests over average citizens. We have principled concerns about how Judge Gorsuch was groomed by hard-right, conservative billionaires like Mr. Phillip Anschutz. We have principled concerns about how Judge Gorsuch was selected off of a pre-approved list of conservative judges made by organizations who have spent three decades campaigning to move our judiciary to the far right. Judge Gorsuch had a chance to answer these concerns in his hearing, we were all waiting and hoping. But our questions were met with practiced evasions. He couldn’t even answer whether Brown v. Board was decided correctly.

Instead of considering the possibility of another nominee should Judge Gorsuch fail to reach 60 votes, the Republicans are threatening to press the big red button for him.

Again, the Republicans are creating a false choice – Judge Gorsuch or a nuclear option – in an attempt to avoid the blame if they change the rules. And it just doesn’t wash. The Republicans control this body. They are in the driver’s seat. And they are the only reason that we are here today: they held this seat open for over a year so that this president could install someone handpicked by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society…a lifetime appointment for this president, whose campaign is under investigation by the FBI for potential ties to Russia…

So, Mr. President, I’d just repeat to my Republican colleagues: you don’t need to change the rules if Judge Gorsuch doesn’t get 60 votes, you’re not required to do so. You just need to change the nominee – do some bipartisan consultation, as presidents of both parties have in the past.

Now on the ACA, Mr. President.

HHS Secretary Price appeared before House Appropriators yesterday and testified that, under his direction, the Dept. of Health and Human Services may try to undermine our nation’s health care system in several ways.

Specifically, he hinted that he may make it easier for insurers to offer coverage without certain essential benefits and refused to say if he’d continue certain programs that help stabilize the health care markets. That is in line with steps this Administration has already taken to undermine the health care law, like when they discontinued the public advertising campaigns that encouraged people to sign up for insurance.

All of these things harm our nation’s health care system, and should be ceased immediately.